Dr Zed Meets Dr Ned
by AlinoValiant
Summary: Some say Dr. Ned was Dr. Zed as an antagonist, others say he was made up and the rest aren't sure. Is the zombie creating Dr. Ned really the supposed brother of the non-licensed Dr. Zed? This question is answered in this little one-shot, for all of you interested.


**Dr. Zed Meets Dr. Ned**

In the inhospitable town of Fyrestone was a middle aged man named Dr. Zed. He wore a doctor's uniform, had a pair of white gloves, a surgical mask covering the bottom half of his face and slick black hair with gray sides. His body was surprisingly muscular, evident by his broad shoulders and arms alone. A name tag was adorned on the left breast of his uniform that said 'Dr. Zed'.

He resided inside a rusted metallic building with a '03' decal beside the wide door, spending much of his time picking at dead bodies brought from the wastes of Pandora; whether it was a hobby of his or because he tried to make up for his medical license being revoked was something only he could answer. He was the only human inhabitant in this non-existent place of interest: thankfully, with Claptrap at New Haven, the eccentric doctor would at least be allowed to enjoy his experiments in peace without listening to that annoying screeching voicebox.

The four vault hunters (Brick, Roland, Lilith, Mordecai) had helped him by clearing out the ruthless bandits that took over Fyrestone, killing Nine-Toes, a raider boss responsible for the attacks on the town and Bone-Head, a supposed rival of Nine-Toes. They had even managed to kill Sledge in Headstone Mine, who had been the main leader of the bandits of the Arid Badlands. After that, Dr. Zed couldn't help but feel a hell of a lot safer not having to worry about these ravaging raiders.

He went to work on a fresh corpse from a tiny group of roving bandits that had attacked him earlier. Even though they were next to leaderless, it didn't stop their undying thirst for blood, loot and shooting shit up. What reckless mutated men they were...

"Same old, same old," Dr. Zed muttered to himself. "These damned raiders just don't know when to give up, do they?"

The fact that he remained here in Fyrestone all alone instead of going to New Haven for safety bothered him very little. After all, he was born and raised in Fyrestone and if it ever happened, he would die in his hometown. It helped that he acquired a Maliwan pistol repeater that shot fire and a Tediore energy shield with a decent capacity and healing properties, of which was from the same group of dead marauders. The non-licensed doctor was NOT going to make it easy for his future intruders.

"This was my childhood... Fyrestone was my town and I would be willing to die here in the very same place, except for the dying part." he said to himself, chopping off the left arm of the corpse with a buzz axe.

Nothing much more had occurred for the rest of the day as Dr. Zed continued his work on the dead bandit, hacking off other limbs and saving them for future use.

* * *

When the sky had turned a warm orange and yellow, he considered getting some sleep. Heading to his dingy bedroom, Dr. Zed laid down on the bed with his arms crossed behind his head. Unsurprisingly, he wasn't actually tired, but nonetheless tried to get a bit of rest; having a case of constant insomnia would certainly keep a person awake. After an hour of uncomfortable tossing and turning, the outlandish doctor sat up in frustration.

"Figures... I can't sleep right now," he said in a low voice, bowing his head down. "What a load of piss."

Dr. Zed got up from his bed and left his home, hoping that a little walk would tire him enough for a quick nap at least. He held his pistol in his right hand and equipped his shield before wandering toward the gates of Fyrestone.

A group of small dog-like creatures called skags greeted him just outside: he answered back by blasting the crap out of each one as the armed doctor set the ferocious skags on fire. Their tough hides were no match for the flaming fury of an elemental weapon. After eliminating the reinforcements from the nearby den, he moved toward the small encampment that once had Nine-Toes' crew keeping watch over this area. Sure enough, the place was deserted; huts and man-made fences of various sizes stood forlorn in the dusty winds while a single red chest laid ahead in the center. Not a single being was present in this abandoned camp, except for the lone doctor.

'_Why not? Maybe I'll get something good out of this weird container..._' Dr. Zed thought to himself as he approached the chest casually.

He opened it, finding a rather old Jakobs sniper rifle and some ammunition clips for his pistol repeater.

'_Hmm... I'm not much of a sniper guy, but it's something at least. Oh well._'

The Pandoran man strapped the sniper onto his back before proceeding to T.K. Baha's home. Zed had only just recently learned that the man had been raided by psychos and hung up by the wooden leg in his house. This odd loner was blinder than a burnt light bulb, but he made up for that with his experience in guns, particularly shotguns. The prized T.K. Wave was his special weapon for this reason. How he was able to defend himself for such a long time, the doc didn't have a clue.

Dr. Zed went inside to investigate the hut: the body of T.K. Baha was suspended upside down from the ceiling fan, rotating slowly. The floor was bloody, as though someone had beaten the blind man like a piñata filled with organs, ketchup and fluids. It was a pretty unnerving sight for the average person.

"Poor sucker," he said quietly, contemplating the hanging corpse. "And all he wanted was a prosthetic leg... Seems like the bandits played a bit too rough with him."

After a moment of silence, the doctor left the hut, fighting through a few smaller skags along the way. As he was finishing off the remnants, a larger, more fierce skag had emerged from a den just to his left. This particular beast had a pair of glowing blue eyes that stared at Dr. Zed threateningly, challenging him. The armed Pandoran assumed this one to be a non-elemental Badass Skag.

Without hesitation, he unleashed a burning barrage of incendiary bullets, setting the badass creature ablaze. Unlike the smaller skags, the big one seemed to shrug off the attacks as it charged headlong at Zed, trying to bite him. He rolled sideways, just avoiding its strong offensive while he kept firing his pistol, attempting to strengthen the flames. The beast was preparing itself for another charge, leaping and stomping the ground this time. Once again, Zed threw himself backwards: he re-ignited the fire, blasting the skag into oblivion as the powerful creature finally succumbed to hell's breath. He witnessed the large corpse being incinerated into nothing with a mad smile as he was breathing heavily from the effort of this fight. His shielding device remained intact.

'_Tough motherfucker..._' the doctor said in his mind, complementing the Badass Skag's endurance. '_Seems like fire, and lots of it, was still effective though, thankfully._'

He glanced upwards at the nightly sky and headed for Fyrestone, now feeling just tired enough for a few hours of sleep. As he reached his humble abode, there was another person waiting there. The mysterious character was hard to discern at first due to the surrounding darkness.

* * *

"Who the hell are you?" Dr. Zed demanded, pointing his fire pistol toward the unknown figure.

"I'm your dear old brother, Dr. Ned, Dr. Zed." he stated, informally putting a hand in his pocket.

Zed became confused, raising an eyebrow. Brother? It couldn't be any relative of his, and yet, the voice sounded exactly like his...

"I don't have no brother. You've mistaken me for someone else stranger."

"Au contraire, I AM your brother. Doesn't the name ring a bell?" the cryptic stranger said.

"Other than the fact that it's a ripoff of my name, no," Dr. Zed exclaimed flatly. "I don't need an outlander like you masquerading as my so-called brother."

The one calling himself Dr. Ned gave out a mirthless laugh. He stepped forward, revealing a man who looked to be a mirror image of Zed himself. The differences were that Ned had an out-of-place mustache placed on the outside of his surgical mask, while his name-tag had the letter 'N' taped over the 'Z' spelling his name.

"You definitely look like me, I'll give you that, but I'm not the slightest bit convinced," Zed went on incredulously. "Any freako could come to my place and claim him or herself as a relative of mine. You just want to take something from me."

"Really? You're sure about that?" Dr. Ned said, crossing his arms. "Coming from someone who lost his medical license, it's not much of a surprise that you're bitter."

"All right, cut the crap. Why are you here, brother?"

Zed said the last word in a disbelieving manner. He kept his gun trained on Dr. Ned.

"I just want to talk to a fellow family relative of mine. Is that too much to ask, brother?" responded Ned mockingly.

"Talk? Sure, we can talk. Not! Now why don't you just mosey on out of here, before I burn you into a pile of smoldering ashes?"

"Now, is that anyway to treat your own flesh and blood? All right, if you want the proof **so** badly, then here it is."

The proclaimed male sibling of Zed took out a piece of folded white paper. After he unfolded it, he gave it to Zed. As he scanned the wrinkled paper, his eyes widened in dumbfounded surprise while his mouth was agape (covered by the mask). It had taken several minutes before the identical doctor was able to speak.

"Well I'll be, you **are** my blood brother after all," said Dr. Zed in full realization. "A birth certificate such as this can't be forgery. It's got the official Pandoran symbol stamped on it."

"There you go, you see? Now do you believe me or not?" said Dr. Ned impatiently, tapping his foot on the ground rapidly.

Zed glanced at his brother, Ned. He nodded reluctantly as the other doctor wore an expression that seemed to say, "Finally!"

"Well, why don't we go inside before we get eaten by skags and bandits?" stated Ned obviously.

The two brothers went inside the steel building labeled '03', with Zed grabbing two chairs from the back of the room. They both sat down and sized each other up: Zed never imagined this doppelganger to be such an exact copy of him. He even had his hairstyle, forehead creases and stern eyes.

"So... how did you get here first of all?" asked Dr. Zed, still holding his pistol repeater in his right hand.

"Fast travel network. I imagined those pesky vault hunters unlocked the areas for me, so I went to one of those fancy shmancy devices and it brought up this list of different locations. Naturally, I picked Fyrestone and now, here I am." answered Dr. Ned nonchalantly.

"I should have known that... well, where did you come from then?"

"Jakobs Cove. I may have done a few bad things there, like killing off 97% of the working population and then turning them into zombies for my infestation. I even came up with the idea of Wereskags!"

Ned brought his hands together in a plotting matter, averting his gaze slightly from Zed. The Fyrestone born doctor shook his head.

"Sounds like something only I could have done, except, you know, I'm not a bad guy like you. And let me guess: the vault hunters foiled your plans for whatever it was you were trying to do?"

"Yeah, that's it!" said Dr. Ned, pointing at his identical brother in acknowledgment. "Them treasure seekers weren't exactly a part of my diabolical plan for creatin' an undead army, huh?"

"Riiiight."

Dr. Zed glared at his brother in disdain. Despite his unethical methods, he had the decency to offer help when the folks needed it. Part of it was because Zed was the only doctor around the wastelands of Pandora, and part of it had to do with profit. Those were examples of him being exempt from his lack of a medical license. Besides, he kept the medical vending machines running, more or less.

"What about you?" Dr. Ned questioned somewhat crossly. "You're not exactly a good Samaritan either, what with you cutting up on living folk and all."

"Don't you bring me into this! Those people were nearly dead anyway, so I was really doing them a big favor. You try living the rest of your life with some made up disease that eats you away from the inside and is apparently uncureable." responded Dr. Zed sharply, his eyebrows creased downwards.

"Oh right, because making a small zombie apocalypse to wipe out a weapons company is a heinous crime of humanity. This is frickin' Pandora we're talking about here! It's mostly a planet with sand, sand, and more sand. Sure, there's bandits and wild animals for company and maybe a few inhabitable towns here and there, but come on now."

Ned leaned back on his chair, crossing one leg over the other while looking oddly smug.

"You make it sound like it's a good thing you were tryin' to do. Did you ever think that someone was eventually going to find out and put a stop to this zombie army of yours in the long run?" asked Zed.

"Okay... maybe I didn't count on those damned vault hunters becoming heroes and actually wiping out my undead forces. Shit... they did manage to kill me, even with my true infested form..."

"You. Are. Mad." Zed said, putting spaced emphasis on each word. Then, he suddenly broke out into a small smile, again, obscured by his surgical mask. "I like you, man."

Dr. Ned wore an expression of surprise as he sat up straight, not having heard him correctly. A few seconds of silence passed before either of them said anything else.

"Seriously? I thought you would have disapproved or somethin' like that, what with you trying to be a real doctor and all." Ned blurted out, a bit shocked by his brother's words.

"Well, you forget that I ain't got a medical license and I'm nearly positive that you don't have one either. Besides, despite what you did, you're my brother, you know? Family comes first."

"Holy hell, thanks Zed. You know, I can honestly say that means somethin' to a bad guy like me, who is totally not you, Dr. Zed."

Dr. Zed nodded approvingly. They said nothing else for several minutes as the two siblings continued to scrutinize each other curiously. It was very quiet, aside from the dusty winds gently blowing outside. Finally, Dr. Zed stood up from his chair, feeling stiff as he was stretching his entire body.

"Hey Ned, you want something to drink or what?" he asked his identical brother, who remained in his seat.

"Sure Zed, I think I'd like that. I guess we really are two different people, huh?"

"No shit sherlock."

Dr. Zed went inside his room to get a drink; a minute passed as he came back with some dark green glass bottles. He handed one over to Ned, while he twisted the cap open from his own.

"All right, you got alcoholic beverages! I need a pick-me-up..." Dr. Ned commented, chugging down his drink greedily.

Zed watched his brother for a brief moment before taking a swig himself. As they drank, the two identical brothers continued to engage in their conversation, now putting their arms around each other. Slightly buzzed, Zed and Ned laughed merrily: they clinked their beer bottles together, almost as a toast to their peculiar brotherhood, before taking another shot.

**(Okay, so this story is my interpretation of what could have happened if Dr. Zed ever met his alleged twin brother, Dr. Ned. Yeah, I couldn't pass up this idea, so here you go. Though it's been proven that Dr. Ned was really Dr. Zed as a bad guy in the Zombie Island DLC, I thought of them as two actual individuals in this scenario. Maybe a bit more entertaining that way, maybe not, who knows? Takes place after the events of Borderlands 1.)**


End file.
